Paradise Park
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This script was freely downloaded from the (re)making project, (charlesmee.org). We hope you'll consider supporting the project by making a donation so that we can keep it free. Please click here to make a donation. Paradise Park by C H A R L E S L . M E E Outdoors on a summer evening. The sound of crickets. Distant music. As a spotlight slowly comes up on him, BENNY is lost, turning around and around. His clothes are dishevelled; his hair is deranged. He drove all night to get here. He looks lost and bewildered and frazzled—but cheerful and expectant. The Ticket [In a few moments, a ticket seller's kiosk appears. The music is a little louder now.] TICKET SELLER Hey! BENNY Oh, Hello. Is this where I get a ticket? TICKET SELLER What do you want? BENNY I'd like to buy a ticket. TICKET SELLER Right: what do you want? BENNY I want to get in. TICKET SELLER You want to get in. BENNY To the amusement park. TICKET SELLER Listen to me carefully: what do you want? BENNY What do I want? Well, I guess I want to escape from my daily life, you know, from the abyss of total meaninglessness that I know lies just beneath my feet at every moment, so that, I feel nothing so much as unbearable hopelessness and despair all the time at some unconscious level, if I don't distract myself with something. TICKET SELLER Right. What I mean is: do you want the family pass or the individual? 2 BENNY Oh, just the individual. TICKET SELLER Ten bucks. BENNY Thanks. TICKET SELLER Hey! No problem. [Deafening music. Benny is engulfed by a projection of the amusement park's midway and, at the same moment, a boat enters.] The Ship of Fools [On board are hundreds of people with telescopes, looking for the horizon. Here is a motley crew Puppets and false figures add to the population of seven live actors, along with some three-dimensional dummies, some two-dimensional cardboard cutouts a rubber/vinyl blow-up doll some giant puppets, some tiny puppets, some big stuffed animals a Balinese shadow puppet: these are travellers from all over the world, tourists, natives of "exotic" lands, moms and dads and kids and cool guys and wookies and people from long-gone historical eras, explorers and visionaries and holy men. 3 Among the others on board are Ella, Jorge, and Edgar, the ventriloquist, who has two dummies with him: Charlie and Mortimer. Three of the people on board the boat are wearing giant fish heads like Archimboldo heads. And these fishheads—Mom, Dad, and their daughter, Darling— like most of the others on board the boat, are all looking through telescopes. The Captain of the ship is a mouse named Vikram, that is, a young man in a mouse suit carrying his mouse head in his arm like a helmet, with a sword strapped around his waist. And he calls out to Benny through a megaphone as the music fades.] VIKRAM, THE MOUSE CAPTAIN Hello there! BENNY Hello! DARLING, a sixteen year old girl Stranger! Stranger on the port side! VIKRAM Put down the gangplank if you please and let this young fellow come on board! [and, while Darling starts to put the gangplank in place, with the help of Mom and Dad, the captain and Benny continue to speak to one another] Going our way? BENNY Well, I don't know. Which way are you going? 4 VIKRAM That's just the thing. We're not quite sure. We seem to be a little lost. BENNY [smiling] Lost! Well. Never mind. I have a map. [taking out his map] There must be a place that says You Are Here. CHARLIE, THE VENTRILOQUIST EDGAR'S DUMMY Now here's a young fellow who seems to have sawdust for a brain. EDGAR, THE VENTRILOQUIST Really? Why do you say that? CHARLIE Well, he seems incapable of engaging in any form of ratiocination. EDGAR Ratiocination. There's a big word. CHARLIE Yes, it is. EDGAR Wherever did you hear a word like that? CHARLIE Well, I don't know. EDGAR No. 5 CHARLIE I don't think I ever heard it before. EDGAR I see. CHARLIE I just opened my mouth and out it popped. EDGAR It just came out. CHARLIE Just popped right out. EDGAR I wonder where it came from. CHARLIE So do I. EDGAR And yet you think he is the fellow with sawdust for a brain. CHARLIE Yes, I do. And I can prove it. EDGAR Indeed? CHARLIE Watch this. Excuse me. But, where are you now? [Benny looks around] BENNY 6 Well, I don't know.... I may be a little bit disoriented. CHARLIE [to Edgar] Well, there you are. VIKRAM [politely to Benny] We've all got maps and charts and compasses and sextants. We still don't know quite where we are. MORTON, Darling's dad I think it's pretty goddam clear they've planned it here so you get lost. NANCY, Darling's mom Oh, Morton! MORTON You can oh, Morton me all you like, nonetheless, it seems to me the way they have things arranged, it's like a roach motel. DARLING Hello! Are we letting down the gangplank or not? VIKRAM Sorry. Sorry. Let down the gangplank. MORTON Forget the gangplank. What good is he to us? He doesn't know which way he's going either! DARLING Pull up the gangplank! 7 NANCY Cast off amidships! MORTON Hoist the mainsail! ELLA Wait! Stop! [silence] Let him come aboard! Let down the gangplank. Hi, stranger. Can I give you a hand? BENNY Oh....Well.... Now that you mention it.... [she comes down the gangplank, one hand outstretched toward him] BENNY Hello. ELLA Hi. BENNY Oh. I guess, I guess you must be from the midwest, too. ELLA Why do you say that? 8 BENNY Because of the way you say, hi. ELLA Oh, well, yes. Yes, I am. From Iowa. BENNY Iowa. I've been to Iowa. I really liked it— all the: space. ELLA Right. BENNY And all the: landscape. ELLA Right. The line of the distant horizon. BENNY Right. And so you came here.... ELLA On vacation. BENNY On vacation. Yes. Yes. So did I. What brought you here? 9 ELLA I thought I'd come for a weekend because it sounded like fun and I like a little escape from my routine like anyone else. BENNY When did you get here? ELLA Two weeks ago. BENNY Two weeks! What a great escape! JORGE I've been here two months. VIKRAM I've been here three years and forty seven days. BENNY Three years and forty seven days! That must be a record. NANCY We've been here ten years, three months, and two days. BENNY Ten years, three months, and two days! NANCY We brought Darling when she was just a little girl and now, as you can see, she's almost a grownup. [Darling is sixteen.] BENNY What? 10 DARLING I like it here. BENNY Ten years? MORTON Okay, shall we be moving along? VIKRAM Alright, people, if you will just settle down on the boat we can be on our way. MORTON So you keep saying and yet you have no idea which way you're going. NANCY Seems to me he's going the wrong way. MORTON Well, I think that's obvious. NANCY That's exactly why I'm saying it. DARLING I like it here. VIKRAM Is everyone ready to go? People? NANCY The thing is: I think we should go back to where we were because, if you think about it, the thing is, right now, we are in the present, 11 and before we were in the present, we were in the past so if we want to get oriented we should go back to the past! MORTON Or, if you don't want to be here, but you want to go someplace else, we should go into the future. NANCY What? MORTON Because where we are, we are in the present, and if we want to get past where we are, that would be the future. VIKRAM Are we ready, people? Here we go. [and, as they start out, everyone is arguing about where to go] NANCY Futureworld. What you're saying is: We could go to futureworld. MORTON Exactly. JORGE Or, just any civilized place at all would be just fine if we could just get out of this place because this is like nowhere 12 CHARLIE This is like Limboland. JORGE And it wouldn't hurt just to get back to civilization MORTON where you can sit down at a dinner table and watch TV NANCY like CivilizationWorld. CHARLIE I say, we should go to Londonland in Englandland that's what I would call The Civilized World. Cotton Candy [As the others all sail away on the boat, Darling, who got off when we weren't noticing, is left standing behind eating cotton candy. We hear a banjo playing furiously, as the projections behind Darling show a medley of ten thousand amusement park rides and adventures that whirl through at great speed: shooting galleries and ferris wheels and villages and cowboy sets, western towns and posses and small town pharmacies and soda fountains and barber shops and outer space and paddlewheel steamers and Las Vegas and cotton candy and ice cream and hot dogs and baseball— while Darling does a performance piece with cotton candy.] 13 The Roller Coaster [While Darling continues with the cotton candy Nancy enters as a film of a roller coaster is projected.